7 ms·

Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running ed

Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. One side effect of the economisation of education is the desire to quantify and standardise "academic quality". For example, setting minimum pass rates for modules, which ultimately leads to declining assessment standards. Or "value added" as a major criterion for educational success, i.e. how much students improve as opposed to how well they did overall (leading to universities taking on many students who are actually not fit for study, because as long as they graduate, much "value" is added for them). Education has a value beyond money, and in countries where education is free or low cost (like Germany) it is often organised around providing the student with the opportunity to learn, rather than focusing on graduating as many students as possible. It is in the responsibility of the student to make use of the resources provided, rather than the responsibility of the provider to satisfy a paying customer. Students who graduated from such universities often are more capable of independent thinking in my experience.

edanm 5y ago
> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare, etc. That might be the correct decision! But it is a decision. There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is.
- m000 5y ago
  > you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare Ironically, the same people who would complain about free education, would complain 10x over more money for the homeless or healthcare.
  - edanm 5y ago
    > Ironically, the same people who would complain about free education, would complain 10x over more money for the homeless or healthcare. That's pretty country-dependent, and is a caricature of most serious people. (Unfortunately lots of people actually do fall into that caricature). E.g. Bryan Caplan is a libertarian, and while I don't think he personally supports a universal basic income, supporting a UBI is a fairly common libertarian position.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, Not everywhere. Next to no homeless people here in Scandinavia yet education is universally available at almost no cost to the student. The US is richer both in absolute terms and per capita so lack of money is presumably not the reason for the difference.
  - edanm 5y ago
    I wasn't saying that it's either education or specifically helping the homeless. I'm saying it's a tradeoff between spending on education, vs. spending on other things. If homelessness isn't a problem, great! There are still other ways to spend the money. Maybe raise the standard of living of the poorest 10% by giving them a UBI. Maybe build nicer gardens. Maybe just have lower taxes! It's totally possible that education is more important than all other uses for that money. It's likely true to some extent, because that's what the country has effectively decided to do. But that comparison has to be made, either implicitly or explicitly, because that money is either going to education or to something else. There's literally no way to not make a decision about this topic.
    - blitzar 5y ago
      As far as I can tell scandinava has all the alternate uses you mention and more, plus the education. But, your point still stands; what they dont have is an ability to push a button and wipe out the human race within 15 minutes, and fleets of stealth bombers flying low over every sporting event (support the troops you commie). All while the population struggles to figure out how many points their team will have if they score a field goal to add to the 7 points they scored in the first half. For the most part governement spending is finite and there is only so much total money that can be dished out. Exepct for in crisis (Covid / War / Great Recession / Election time) of course and then the magic money tree is found in the back yard.
      - pclmulqdq 5y ago
        They also have a 40-50% tax on the middle class and a 20% VAT on goods. That's what they are trading for this.
- zaarn 5y ago
  Paying a lot of money into education prevents homelessness! Educated people are more likely to find an income than people who have less knowledge of the world. And it's not only purely educating people, it's also about providing supportive services, such as job finding programs, mental health counseling, etc etc. By spending more on education you may spend less on homeless right now but you can prevent people from becoming homeless. And on top of that, you can also reform how homelessness works in your country. In Germany, having a home is a fundamental right, why is it not in America? By burderning the government with sheltering you and giving you a postal address, a lot of hurdles for reentering the job market are simply taken away, reducing the need to spend much.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    The same argument applies if you pick a different alternative, though. Money you choose to spend on education (with all its knock-on effects in homelessness, public health, employment, and so on) is money you can't spend on street cleaning, road maintenance, whatever, but also the investment you're making via education in the future homelessness problem is money you can't spend on acute homelessness problems today that can't be reached by education because it's too late for the people involved.
    - zaarn 5y ago
      Then you need to make your spending on these other problems more effective. Give tenants more rights to stay in a home, give people more job security, make mental health programs cheaper and target vulnerable populations. Etc.
      - regularfry 5y ago
        ...and the same argument applies again. It doesn't matter how effective they are, the same logic applies: money you spend on thing A cannot then be used on thing B. That is a choice. I should add that changing things to make them more effective also costs money.
        5y ago
- periheli0n 5y ago
  > There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is. Judging the benefit of education only on the financial bottomline is bound to underestimate its real value. For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on. Therefore it is in the interest of a democratic country that citizen have access to education, and that they can afford it. > when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare, etc. Education is correlated with health and longevity. Also, educated people are more likely to make sane life decisions and plan ahead. Therefore, by subsidising education, one likely reduces the number of homeless and the cost of public health. But none of this is expressed in the calculation that measures the "value" of education by the personal financial gain an individual can achieve. Therefore I argue that this measure is not suitable to measure the value of education.
  - edanm 5y ago
    > But none of this is expressed in the calculation that measures the "value" of education by the personal financial gain an individual can achieve. Therefore I argue that this measure is not suitable to measure the value of education. I agree, that would be a very short-sighted calculation. Luckily, that's not even close to the calculation that Bryan Caplan did and is talking about. I'm not sure if we're actually disagreeing or arguing past each other. Bryan Caplan wrote a book about whether education is "worth it", in many senses - both the personal "is it worth it for me" aspect, but also the "is it worth it for society" aspect. He delved into multiple different topics as part of this question - including, I believe, questions like the ones you raise. (It's been a while since I read his book). You are not fundamentally disagreeing with the notion of calculating the value of education. You're disagreeing with a specific calculation that you think I (or someone else) did, but which isn't the actual calculation done by anyone.
  - sjy 5y ago
    The effects of education on democratic participation, workforce participation and public health are all explicitly assessed in Caplan’s book, particularly chapter 6. This comment tends to prove the point he makes in the article: “Quantitative social science is barely relevant in the real world … If you’re lucky, researchers default to common sense. Otherwise, they go with their ideology and status-quo bias, using the latest prestigious papers as fig leaves.”
- iib 5y ago
  That may have been true if much of the cost of education was not artificial, like non-free manuals (as in free software) or paying for non-open access journals.
renewiltord 5y ago
> Students who graduated from such universities often are more capable of independent thinking in my experience. Germany: 111 Nobel Laureates University of Columbia: 83 Nobel Laureates The whole country struggled to produce just a little more than one American university. They may think more independently, but it seems that it was so independent as to fail to advance human knowledge much more than a single American university.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I believe that, in the 40s and 50s the occupying forces intentionally drained the research capabilities of Germany (as part of a larger push draining industrial capabilities). Hence I would expect Germany to be kneecapped in their Nobel laureate production for a significant part of the last century.
  - onikolas7 5y ago
    Draining Germany of talent started even earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Restoration_of_the_Professional_Civil_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Restoration_of_the...
- vitalysh 5y ago
  It would be interesting to see the split: Out of 83 Nobel Laureates, how many gained their education in University of Columbia? How many were professors that moved to University of Columbia after receiving their education somewhere else? For example: Horst Ludwig Störmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Ludwig_St%C3%B6rmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Ludwig_St%C3%B6rmer German scientist, but point goes to University of Columbia
  - m000 5y ago
    Also Arthur Ashkin (2018 Physics) only did his BS in Columbia. I guess everyone is counting that way, but this method of counting surely favours prestigeous, highly sought after, universities. Also, the number of Laureates in sciences relates more to the funding of research rather than the quality of education. Any affiliation with a US institution gives you better access (in the short or long run) to research funding.
hgomersall 5y ago
This is a problem with much of mainstream economics. Start by defining everything worth measuring as the things you can measure, then build elaborate models around those measurements, then declare success when your models yield an output. Finally, influence policy to try get more of one measurable and less of another.
randomsilence 5y ago
>Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. The monetary value itself is useful to everybody who makes a decision. A student at least invests their own time into that education. Shouldn't they know how valuable that education is to decide if it's worth their time? The problem is not the evaluation. Students seek graduation instead of education because they need access to that social network of alumni. A monetary value makes that demand visible.
- periheli0n 5y ago
  > The monetary value itself is useful to everybody who makes a decision. But I think the real value of education can't be expressed in monetary terms alone. Educated people tend to live longer and healthier. They tend to make more rational financial decisions and plan their lives with more foresight. In a democracy it is essential that the voting population is educated and able of processing complex information, otherwise it stops functioning.
  - randomsilence 5y ago
    Of course you need educated people for a democracy. That's why the old generation dedicates enough funds to educate the next generation. Regarding the value of education. If it has a value, why can't it have a monetary value? At one point in your life, you have shifted the majority of your time from learning to making money. You can only make that decision rationally if you have put a monetary value on your education.
    - periheli0n 5y ago
      My point is that the monetary value one could put on education is bound to neglect the real value of education. How do you express the value of education for a functioning democracy in monetary terms for an individual? How to express the monetary benefit of being able to make better life choices as a result of education?

edanm 5y ago

> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare, etc. That might be the correct decision! But it is a decision. There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is.

m000 5y ago
> you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare Ironically, the same people who would complain about free education, would complain 10x over more money for the homeless or healthcare.
- edanm 5y ago
  > Ironically, the same people who would complain about free education, would complain 10x over more money for the homeless or healthcare. That's pretty country-dependent, and is a caricature of most serious people. (Unfortunately lots of people actually do fall into that caricature). E.g. Bryan Caplan is a libertarian, and while I don't think he personally supports a universal basic income, supporting a UBI is a fairly common libertarian position.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
> when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, Not everywhere. Next to no homeless people here in Scandinavia yet education is universally available at almost no cost to the student. The US is richer both in absolute terms and per capita so lack of money is presumably not the reason for the difference.
- edanm 5y ago
  I wasn't saying that it's either education or specifically helping the homeless. I'm saying it's a tradeoff between spending on education, vs. spending on other things. If homelessness isn't a problem, great! There are still other ways to spend the money. Maybe raise the standard of living of the poorest 10% by giving them a UBI. Maybe build nicer gardens. Maybe just have lower taxes! It's totally possible that education is more important than all other uses for that money. It's likely true to some extent, because that's what the country has effectively decided to do. But that comparison has to be made, either implicitly or explicitly, because that money is either going to education or to something else. There's literally no way to not make a decision about this topic.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    As far as I can tell scandinava has all the alternate uses you mention and more, plus the education. But, your point still stands; what they dont have is an ability to push a button and wipe out the human race within 15 minutes, and fleets of stealth bombers flying low over every sporting event (support the troops you commie). All while the population struggles to figure out how many points their team will have if they score a field goal to add to the 7 points they scored in the first half. For the most part governement spending is finite and there is only so much total money that can be dished out. Exepct for in crisis (Covid / War / Great Recession / Election time) of course and then the magic money tree is found in the back yard.
    - pclmulqdq 5y ago
      They also have a 40-50% tax on the middle class and a 20% VAT on goods. That's what they are trading for this.
zaarn 5y ago
Paying a lot of money into education prevents homelessness! Educated people are more likely to find an income than people who have less knowledge of the world. And it's not only purely educating people, it's also about providing supportive services, such as job finding programs, mental health counseling, etc etc. By spending more on education you may spend less on homeless right now but you can prevent people from becoming homeless. And on top of that, you can also reform how homelessness works in your country. In Germany, having a home is a fundamental right, why is it not in America? By burderning the government with sheltering you and giving you a postal address, a lot of hurdles for reentering the job market are simply taken away, reducing the need to spend much.
- regularfry 5y ago
  The same argument applies if you pick a different alternative, though. Money you choose to spend on education (with all its knock-on effects in homelessness, public health, employment, and so on) is money you can't spend on street cleaning, road maintenance, whatever, but also the investment you're making via education in the future homelessness problem is money you can't spend on acute homelessness problems today that can't be reached by education because it's too late for the people involved.
  - zaarn 5y ago
    Then you need to make your spending on these other problems more effective. Give tenants more rights to stay in a home, give people more job security, make mental health programs cheaper and target vulnerable populations. Etc.
    - regularfry 5y ago
      ...and the same argument applies again. It doesn't matter how effective they are, the same logic applies: money you spend on thing A cannot then be used on thing B. That is a choice. I should add that changing things to make them more effective also costs money.
      - 5y ago
periheli0n 5y ago
> There is no way around the idea that education, like everything else, costs resources, time and money, that can be spent on other things. It's a totally valid thing to wonder whether it's the best use of that money there is. Judging the benefit of education only on the financial bottomline is bound to underestimate its real value. For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on. Therefore it is in the interest of a democratic country that citizen have access to education, and that they can afford it. > when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare, etc. Education is correlated with health and longevity. Also, educated people are more likely to make sane life decisions and plan ahead. Therefore, by subsidising education, one likely reduces the number of homeless and the cost of public health. But none of this is expressed in the calculation that measures the "value" of education by the personal financial gain an individual can achieve. Therefore I argue that this measure is not suitable to measure the value of education.
- edanm 5y ago
  > But none of this is expressed in the calculation that measures the "value" of education by the personal financial gain an individual can achieve. Therefore I argue that this measure is not suitable to measure the value of education. I agree, that would be a very short-sighted calculation. Luckily, that's not even close to the calculation that Bryan Caplan did and is talking about. I'm not sure if we're actually disagreeing or arguing past each other. Bryan Caplan wrote a book about whether education is "worth it", in many senses - both the personal "is it worth it for me" aspect, but also the "is it worth it for society" aspect. He delved into multiple different topics as part of this question - including, I believe, questions like the ones you raise. (It's been a while since I read his book). You are not fundamentally disagreeing with the notion of calculating the value of education. You're disagreeing with a specific calculation that you think I (or someone else) did, but which isn't the actual calculation done by anyone.
- sjy 5y ago
  The effects of education on democratic participation, workforce participation and public health are all explicitly assessed in Caplan’s book, particularly chapter 6. This comment tends to prove the point he makes in the article: “Quantitative social science is barely relevant in the real world … If you’re lucky, researchers default to common sense. Otherwise, they go with their ideology and status-quo bias, using the latest prestigious papers as fig leaves.”
iib 5y ago
That may have been true if much of the cost of education was not artificial, like non-free manuals (as in free software) or paying for non-open access journals.

renewiltord 5y ago

> Students who graduated from such universities often are more capable of independent thinking in my experience. Germany: 111 Nobel Laureates University of Columbia: 83 Nobel Laureates The whole country struggled to produce just a little more than one American university. They may think more independently, but it seems that it was so independent as to fail to advance human knowledge much more than a single American university.

rocqua 5y ago
I believe that, in the 40s and 50s the occupying forces intentionally drained the research capabilities of Germany (as part of a larger push draining industrial capabilities). Hence I would expect Germany to be kneecapped in their Nobel laureate production for a significant part of the last century.
- onikolas7 5y ago
  Draining Germany of talent started even earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Restoration_of_the_Professional_Civil_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_for_the_Restoration_of_the...
vitalysh 5y ago
It would be interesting to see the split: Out of 83 Nobel Laureates, how many gained their education in University of Columbia? How many were professors that moved to University of Columbia after receiving their education somewhere else? For example: Horst Ludwig Störmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Ludwig_St%C3%B6rmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Ludwig_St%C3%B6rmer German scientist, but point goes to University of Columbia
- m000 5y ago
  Also Arthur Ashkin (2018 Physics) only did his BS in Columbia. I guess everyone is counting that way, but this method of counting surely favours prestigeous, highly sought after, universities. Also, the number of Laureates in sciences relates more to the funding of research rather than the quality of education. Any affiliation with a US institution gives you better access (in the short or long run) to research funding.

hgomersall 5y ago

This is a problem with much of mainstream economics. Start by defining everything worth measuring as the things you can measure, then build elaborate models around those measurements, then declare success when your models yield an output. Finally, influence policy to try get more of one measurable and less of another.

randomsilence 5y ago

>Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. The monetary value itself is useful to everybody who makes a decision. A student at least invests their own time into that education. Shouldn't they know how valuable that education is to decide if it's worth their time? The problem is not the evaluation. Students seek graduation instead of education because they need access to that social network of alumni. A monetary value makes that demand visible.

periheli0n 5y ago
> The monetary value itself is useful to everybody who makes a decision. But I think the real value of education can't be expressed in monetary terms alone. Educated people tend to live longer and healthier. They tend to make more rational financial decisions and plan their lives with more foresight. In a democracy it is essential that the voting population is educated and able of processing complex information, otherwise it stops functioning.
- randomsilence 5y ago
  Of course you need educated people for a democracy. That's why the old generation dedicates enough funds to educate the next generation. Regarding the value of education. If it has a value, why can't it have a monetary value? At one point in your life, you have shifted the majority of your time from learning to making money. You can only make that decision rationally if you have put a monetary value on your education.
  - periheli0n 5y ago
    My point is that the monetary value one could put on education is bound to neglect the real value of education. How do you express the value of education for a functioning democracy in monetary terms for an individual? How to express the monetary benefit of being able to make better life choices as a result of education?